Communication scholars traditionally have assumed that children have only limited exposure to politically relevant information. This study attempts to assess the validity of this assumption by comparing the content of two sources generally available to United States school children: The "Weekly Reader" and television news. For two ten-week periods, the fourth-grade, fifth-grade, and sixth-grade editions of the "Weekly Reader" were analyzed for content. Each article was coded separately for such dimensions as length of item, number of accompanying photographs, and subject. Concurrently, abstracts of network television news broadcasts were analyzed for content, with broadcast time substituted for column inches as the indicator of story emphasis. Variations between the manifest content of the "Reader" and the content of television news can be attributed to both audience and institutional differences. Generally, findings indicate that the primary value of the "Reader" is as a classroom heuristic--its value as a source of news and political information is minimal. (KS)